


Don´t Let Them Win

by RobinMediocreFellow



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Langst, M/M, klangst, trigger warning: suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 20:01:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16523675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinMediocreFellow/pseuds/RobinMediocreFellow
Summary: Lance sacrificed himself for the team. For Keith.Keith thought he had known death, known pain. Truth is, he knew nothing at all.Finding the note would bring the worst of all the pain.-------------------------------------Major Trigger Warning For Suicide (Graphic)Please seek help if you are dealing with something like this. You are not alone.





	Don´t Let Them Win

**Author's Note:**

> I´m not doing well.

It comes out of nowhere, the blast. A ray of light and an explosion. Lance´s last words and that terrible, terrible scream still echo in Keith´s head hours later. He sacrificed himself. Lance sacrificed himself for the team. For Keith. And now Keith has to live on with his lover´s blood on his hands and his last words in his thoughts. _Don’t let them win_. He hadn’t. He made sure to slaughter every last galra on that ship and on the planet, it had been circling. He made sure to make them pay for Lance´s death.

Keith thought he had known death, known pain. Truth is, he knew nothing at all. Losing his father, sure it was painful, and he cried and screamed and thrown things at the wall to watch them shatter into pieces the same way his heart had. But it was nothing, _nothing_ , compared to the pain of losing Lance. A pain so harsh he feels numb, that tears his heart to pieces beating themselves apart with anger and fear, his hands bloody no matter how many times he scrubbed at them and with only one thought on his mind.

 _Why_?

 _Why_ Lance? _Why_ like this? _Why_ to save him?

Finding the note would bring the worst of all the pain. It´s been a day. A day since the blue lion´s eyes went out. Since Keith slit the throat of a galra soldier in front a civilian and her child. A day since Shiro, the only one brave enough to fly out and retrieve the lion, extinguished the last glimmer of hope by recovering the body. They laid him out on a table, with his eyes staring into nothing and his skin ghostly pale. His neck was snapped, Keith saw it when Shiro had carried him and he had screamed at Shiro to _support his fucking head_ even though he knew it didn’t matter. Lance was gone. There was nothing left behind his eyes, his lips already blue save for the thin trickle of blood running down his chin.

It was Hunk who had closed his eyes, his fingers gloved because he was trying to hide that he had chewed his nails to the point that they were bleeding.

And Pidge had tried to say something, but the words caught in her throat and she closed her mouth and just stood there, silent tears running down her face, shuddering so hard her teeth clattered.

In the end it was Allura who spoke, about the bravery of Lance´s sacrifice and the honor it had been to have fought along side him and Keith wanted to throw up. He wanted to scream at her to shut her mouth because no fancy speech could bring Lance back, he was gone, he was fucking _dead,_ all because Keith hadn’t been there in time. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t scream and he couldn’t vomit, so he turned on his heel and left the room, not looking back. Maybe Shiro called after him, he didn’t know. He couldn’t hear anything but Lance´s scream ringing in his ears.

He locked himself in Lance´s room, his bare and empty room with nothing in it but his clothes and he had wrapped himself in his jacket and breathed in his scent and then the vomit had come. Keith had stumbled into the bathroom and retched into the toilet and not even worried when all he threw up was blood because he knew he had been hurt but no wound could hurt as much as Lance not being there anymore.

Shiro was the first to come, first knocking, then pounding on the door, shouting at Keith to answer him to let him know that he was okay. But Keith wasn’t okay, Keith was not okay at all and Shiro saw that when he finally bust into the room after forcing Pidge to overwrite the system of the door lock. He found his little brother cowered into a corner, wrapped in Lance´s jacket with bloody vomit drying on his chin, covering his ears with his hands and begging Lance to stop screaming. He dropped to his knees by his side, trying to tear his hands away and when that didn’t work, just holding him to his chest and letting him cry through the night.

Keith refused medical care. He refused to eat. He didn’t sleep. By morning he was glued to the glass coffin that was between him and the body – him and Lance. He had tried to open it, smash it to pieces, hacked at it with his sword. Nothing had worked. And so he just sat there, wrapped in Lance´s jacket, staring at the bruises on his skin, both from the crash and from his heart no longer beating.

He finds the note in Lance´s jacket, in the left outer pocket. It´s actual pen on paper, like something from earth. Keith knows Lance is- was homesick and it hurts to know that he will never see the earth again. He unfolds the note with shaking fingers, _For Keith_ , it says at the very top and Keith stifles a scream when the next words he reads are _I´m sorry._

_For Keith._

_I´m sorry. This is what I had to do. I know the team can continue without me and I know you can, too. This isn’t your fault. I did what I had to do. I love you._

_Goodbye._

_Lance_

And Keith screams for real, he screams at the body in the coffin, at Lance that isn’t there anymore but that he loves so much and then he collapses on the glass and just cries, because there´s nothing else he can do.

He wants to hide the note from the team to spare them the pain, but something forces him to knock on Shiro´s door. He can taste blood again but to him it´s nothing but the sick reminder of alive he is and that Lance is not. Shiro opens the door with red eyes and slumped shoulders, steps aside to let Keith in without saying a word. Keith can´t bring himself to say what it is out loud as he hands over the note and sits on the bed, wrapping the jacket tighter around himself. Shiro chokes on his words as he says that he has to show this to Allura and Keith nods numbly and stays sitting on the bed until Shiro is gone and he returns to his vigil by his lover´s body.

He hears Allura´s ear-piercing scream of grief as if his ears are filled with wool, barely registers the rest of the team joining him by the coffin for hours on end, trying to talk to him. Hunk brings him food at one point. Keith doesn’t eat. Coran and Shiro insist on examining him for the blood running down his chin – he pulls his sword on them and breaks down into tears when he realizes his reflection looks like Lance.

The funeral is the day after that. Keith doesn’t try to remember on what planet; he has no plans on visiting the grave. Everyone is there, the leaders of the coalition, Matt and the rebel fighters, the Blade of Marmora. Keith doesn’t even make it halfway through the ceremony before he runs back to the castle. No one follows him, they´re all occupied with their own grief and sadness.

Keith runs blindly, finds himself in the hangar just minutes later. Lance´s scent is buried deep his in jacket and Keith presses it to his nose as he cries and screams at the blue lion, _why couldn’t she have saved him? She must have known what he was going to do!_

Why hadn’t Keith known.

Why hadn’t he done more, when Lance had looked sad and tired, when he had cried at night, because he thought Keith was asleep, when he had started taking unnecessary _weeks_ ago, _why hadn’t Keith realized his boyfriend was suicidal._

_Why hadn’t Keith been reason enough for Lance to stay._

Before he even knows what he´s doing Keith has rolled up his sleeves, finds himself with his mother´s blade in his hand. He wasn’t a good enough reason for her to stay and now Lance is gone too and Keith is so tired. He is coughing up blood, his abdomen is rigid and bruised beyond recognition. He is going to die and that´s alright, because he doesn’t want to live without Lance.

The dagger is cool against the soft skin of his wrist and he draws a red line by tracing the tip along it. Lance´s scream echoes in his ears, that cry of pain and fear that was his last breath, and Keith jabs the knife into his wrist, pulls it toward the crook of his elbow and he screams, he screams of unbearable pain, that of his arm and of Lance, _his Lance_ , and his body is shaking with adrenaline, his hands wet with blood and cold sweat as he abandons his sliced open forearm for the other. The sight of his bones inside his arms begins to fill with black spots and he drops the knife and slumps into a growing pool of blood at the blue lion´s feet, the piercing metal smell of blood overpowering Lance´s scent and Keith throws up and it´s only more blood. His heart is racing like never before, blood and tears flowing, and only when he hears his brother´s excruciating cry of pain from the hangar doors does he realize what he´s done.

And now all he wants is to be alive, to be there for his brother, his team, and the fight against the galra, but it´s too late and by the time Shiro has reached him and is cradling him in his arms while screaming for help and for Keith to hang on, to stay with him, by the time Keith´s heart has lost its rhythm and is pumping wildly and then not at all, then Keith says his last words that aren’t his with his last breath.

**_Don’t let them win._ **


End file.
